Robbovic
That too was my initial (puzzled) reaction - it seems all they are doing is creating an automatic contract change trigger which increases the ADSC update rate whenever there is an altitude or route deviation event?
And I am certainly a little confused at the meedja fanfare this is receiving. From the CBC article linked by Johno8;
Houston warned that new method being trialed would not necessarily have allowed air traffic controllers to monitor Flight 370 — whose transponder and other tracking equipment shut down during the flight — to the point where it crashed.
"I think we've got to be very, very careful because you can turn this system off," he said. "What would have happened while the system is operating, we'd know exactly where the aircraft was. If somebody had turned the system off, we're in the same set of circumstances as we've experienced on the latter part of the flight of MH370."
So we are back to square one anyway...the point of the exercise being...?